Interest in creating rich user experiences has resulted in the proliferation of software applications that allow the end user to zoom in/out, pan, and/or rotate through the content of digital images. Most of these software applications have been designed around the capabilities of a particular type of computing device (predominantly PCs), typically using the World Wide Web (a.k.a. Internet) to access digital images from a repository physically maintained in remote servers.
As a wide range of computing devices of varying characteristics are available to the end user in today's market, the original design of such software applications is being challenged, since they are not always well suited for smaller computing devices. The computing device characteristics relevant to this matter are: the size and orientation (portrait or landscape) of the display area made available to the software application (only known at execution), the storage capacity (either built-in or accessible thru an external medium), and the data processing speed.
It is important to note that the data transfer speed of the network is an important enabler of client/server software applications with such navigation capabilities, in particular if the computing device has significant limitations, like it is the case of most cellular phones. Fortunately, networks with broadband speeds (i.e. 3G) are now available in major markets worldwide, allowing wireless portable devices to access data from remote servers at a reasonable response time.
Thus, it would be an advance in the art to develop a generic non-platform specific method and/or system that can be easily adapted to the variety of storage and data processing characteristics of the wide range of computing devices available in the market, providing navigation capabilities regardless of the size and orientation (portrait or landscape) of the computing device display area and the size and orientation of the digital images.